But UTV Media, owner of BBC 5 Live rival TalkSport, said it was relatively straightforward for the BBC to showcase less popular sports during the biggest multidiscipline event ever staged in the UK.

UTV called on the corporation to "grasp its longer-term responsibilities to support a permanent legacy for the Olympics".

The rival broadcaster also called on the BBC to share its exclusive rights to sporting events such as the Olympics.

A number of sports organisations backed UTV's call, including Badminton England, the England Hockey Board, the Angling Trust and the Rugby Football Union for Women. The groups signed a separate letter to the BBC Trust asking it to "codify BBC radio's responsibility to sport in all its guises, not just popular sports such as Premier League football".

The company claimed Radio 5 Live's coverage of sports outside of football, cricket, rugby, Formula 1, golf and tennis was "fleetingly and irregularly scheduled and poorly signposted".

In its submission to the BBC Trust, UTV said it backed the "pop-up" Olympics station but said a condition of its temporary licence should be permanent slots for minority and Olympics sports coverage in Radio 5 Live's peaktime and evening programmes.

UTV claimed the station was failing in its commitment, signposted to the then BBC governors in 2001, to "expand the range and scope of sports coverage".

"Using licence fee funds to ensure that only BBC Radio has access to a particular sporting fixture (such as coverage of the Olympics) reduces the value generated for licence fee payers," said UTV.

"Whilst exclusivity is typically attached to rights by the rights owner rather than a broadcaster, we see no reason why the BBC could not insist on waiving the right to exclusivity by requesting that exclusivity provisions are removed from its sports rights contracts."

This echoes a call made four years ago by Andrew Harrison, chief executive of commercial radio trade body, the Radio Centre, for the corporation to share more rights with commercial broadcasters. It appeared to have little impact.

The BBC has less money to spend on sports rights than it did then, with Radio 5 Live set to suffer further as a result of the "Delivering Quality First" round of cost cutting.

Tim Woodhouse, head of policy and external affairs at the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation, said: "We think all the media, including the BBC, should devote more time and space to women's sport.

"It's a product that's on the up and has good support from audiences when the best quality events are shown whether it's the women's World Cup from Germany or the British Women's [golf] Open."

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